


In Time, With My Whole Heart

by spn1dneedit



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst, Discussion of Abortion, F/M, Fate, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Miscarriage, Multi, Pregnancy, Pregnant Sex, Teen Pregnancy, Unplanned Pregnancy, dual timelines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:22:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28169964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spn1dneedit/pseuds/spn1dneedit
Summary: Beverly is pregnant and the Losers could not be happier, this time. As they prepare for the arrival of their baby, Beverly finds herself constantly reminded of how it went the last time.
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Beverly Marsh/Richie Tozier, Beverly Marsh/Stanley Uris, Bill Denbrough/Beverly Marsh, Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon/Ben Hanscom/Eddie Kaspbrak/Beverly Marsh/Richie Tozier/Stanley Uris, Eddie Kaspbrak/Beverly Marsh, Mike Hanlon/Beverly Marsh
Comments: 11
Kudos: 46
Collections: Poly Losers Club Fic Exchange Vol.3





	In Time, With My Whole Heart

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to @antisociallilbrat on tumblr for the fantastic prompt of Beverly finding out she's pregnant and the boys going into dad mode!  
> also big thanks to @poly-losers-club for hosting the third! Poly Losers Fic Exchange!

**8 (July)**

“Fuck it’s hot as shit.” Richie moans from his place sitting on the kitchen counter, dramatically fanning himself with a paper plate. Bev wants to laugh but she can’t, not with the way her slick thighs are stuck to the dining room chair she’s sitting in. It doesn’t help, she supposes, that all seven of them are sitting in the kitchen in the middle of July, five of them just waiting for Mike and Stan to finish breakfast while they decide what to do with the first day in weeks they’ve all had off of work.

When nobody says anything in response, Richie groans louder and kicks his legs out, “It’s hoooooot.” His toes brush Stan’s side as he stretches, and Stan smacks him with the spatula he’s been using to flip pancakes.

“Beep Beep Richie.” Stan mutters, then goes back to silently cooking.

“So nobody else is hot? I’m the only one that’s sweating like a hooker in church?” This time Bev does laugh. Richie looks at her, gestures to the Ben, Eddie, and Bill at the kitchen table, and rolls his eyes.

“It’s hot R-R-Richie. We all know it’s hot. No need to keep reminding us.” Bill is leaned back almost comically in his hair and Bev would normally laugh at that too, but the heat is eating her humor. And the breakfast that’s being cooked doesn’t smell remotely appetizing. Between the heat and the food, Beverly would rather be almost anywhere besides this kitchen.

“If you want me to stop complaining about it being hot then do something about it.” This has been a reoccurring argument over the last week. The house they bought last year, a mid-century four bedroom in southern California that Ben says is just temporary until they have enough money to sell this one and build their own, has central air, but for the last week it hasn’t worked at all. A repairman is coming in a few days, but the swear droplets on Beverly’s thighs, upper lip, and under her tits are little reminders that Mike is too nice to ever deal with scheduling repairmen.

If it had been Stan or herself on the phone, they’d be calm and cool right now. But it was Mike, and when the guy said he’d be at the house in a week, Mike had just said “Okay”, rather than “What about tomorrow?”

“After breakfast let’s go to the beach. It’s the same temperature as in here, but at least there’ll be a breeze.” Ben suggests. The beach sounds great. It’s been forever since she’s gone, even though they live less than an hour drive away from the ocean.

“Fuck yes!” Richie exclaims. The makeshift plate fan waggles in his arms as he throws his arms out in exultation.

“I’m down for the beach.” Eddie chimes in, “The UV index isn’t too high. Of course we’ll still need sunblock, but I doubt I’ll burn too terribly.”

“Good idea, Ben. The beach sounds nice.” Mike says as he shuffles the last of the eggs onto a heaping plate and turns around to set the plate on the dining room table. They look amazing, but the smell makes Beverly feel so sick she turns her head away when she nods in agreement.

“If you feel up to it, Bev.” Stan says with his back turned toward her.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” She asks, confused. She likes the beach just as much as the rest of them. Hell, probably even more.

Still facing away from the rest of them Stan says, matter of fact, “Because you’re on your period. It’s not a big deal, I just wasn’t sure how comfortable you’d be.”

“No I’m not.” Beverly speaks on top of the last words of Stan’s sentence, but she doesn’t care.

“See, we can do something else. Like I said, not a big deal.”

“Nooo.” Beverly stretches out the word, Stan’s not getting it, “I’m perfectly fine going to the beach because I’m not on my period.”

“Yes you are. It’s the 18th, you should be on day two or three right now.” Stan says it with such matter of fact conviction that it makes Bev count the days in her own head. The only problem is that she can’t remember when her last period was. She hadn’t noticed she’d missed June, but now that she’s thinking back to it, she’d brought tampons to a weeklong workshop in Milan, but didn’t use a single one.

In fact, looking back, as five pairs of eyes stare at her with curiosity and one pair focuses on breakfast like he knows he’s right so whole heartedly that he believes Bev might not have noticed her own period, Beverly realizes that her last period had been in May.

“I didn’t get my period this month… or last month either.” Beverly has said those words before, and just like last time, she only has a moment to feel them in her mouth before she feels like retching.

_“I didn’t get my period this month… or last month either.” Beverly stood in the bathroom of Richie’s house with him. The summer after their senior year, four years after the summer of It, they were both only seventeen still. Saying it out loud made her feel sick, dirty even._

_“Fuck.” Richie breathed out. Beverly didn’t quite understand why she’d called him before any of the others. He wasn’t Bill who’d always know what to do, or Eddie who’d tell her that teenagers sometimes had irregular periods and that it wasn’t much to worry about, or Mike or Ben who would say whatever comforting sweetness she wanted to hear. Hell, he wasn’t even Stan, who would run pale white and match on the outside exactly what Beverly felt herself on the inside. He was Richie, who would only say ‘fuck’ and light up a cigarette._

_He did exactly that._

_“You done a test yet?” He asked, then handed her the cigarette, from which she took a long pull before breathing it out slowly through the cracked open bathroom window._

_She pulled a box with a pregnancy test out of the back pocket of her jeans. Inside she felt the test, and her future, shaking around in there._

_“Not yet, I grabbed this from Keane’s after I called you.” She stole it, she thought, but didn’t say out loud. She couldn’t possibly have brought it up to the pharmacy counter. People talked in Derry, and Beverly could only imagine how fast news would spread that the Marsh slut was pregnant if she actually let Keane check her out._

_Richie nods, “You want to take it now?” He’s so serious in the face it ages him five years. He still looks so young. That’s how she knows that no matter what the test says, Beverly will not be having a baby._

_Beverly nods. Then she pees on the stick. Then she waits._

Breakfast and the beach are long forgotten once Beverly explains to them all how long it’s been since she got her period. She explains about Milan, and how she brought tampons, but they still sit in her suitcase unused. She explains that she hadn’t noticed she was late this month because work has been so busy, and the air conditioning has been out, and when her and Ben had both been throwing up a week ago she thought they both had food poisoning.

Ben had pointed out as it was happening that they hadn’t even eaten the same thing, and that she seemed to be better by the afternoon while he needed at least another day, but Beverly hadn’t thought anything of it. Now, she thinks of what it could be, what it could mean.

When she tells the men around her about the food poisoning, she sees the same thought in all of their heads as well.

“Do you w-w-want me to run to the store?” Bill asks from his seat right next to Beverly. He doesn’t need to say what for.

“I think you should probably take one… Just in case.” Mike adds.

“Either way,” Eddie interjects, and Beverly can’t help but smile at the way he rocks back and forth on his heels. He hasn’t stopped moving since Beverly started talking. In a weird way he seems more excited than anxious. “You need to see a doctor. If you are then… That’s why. If you aren’t, then missing two periods is enough reason to see someone.”

“Okay, so I’ll take a test.” Beverly looks at the eggs on the table that are making her sick, discreetly pushes her breasts together and winces at their sensitivity, and counts all fifty two days she’s been missing a period.

She’ll take the test, but she doesn’t need it.

She sits at the kitchen table stiff and silent until Bill and Stan come back from the drugstore with a pregnancy test. Actually, after a heated debate with Eddie over the phone over which test was the most accurate, Bill and Stan come back with four different tests.

After grabbing Richie’s hand and dragging him behind her to the upstairs bathroom, Bev pees on all four tests. Then, with just the two of them in the bathroom, Eddie lying in wait outside, and the rest of them puttering around nervously downstairs, Bev picks it up and takes a look at the first result, already knowing what she’ll see.

_“Fuck.” Bev whispered and tried to steady her hands and her heart enough to grab the test from where it hung precariously off the ledge of the bathroom sink._

_“Don’t you worry little lass, I’ll take the first look.” Richie lilted, but his joking Irish accent was shaky with anxiety. He reached for the test and when he flipped it over, Bev noticed that his hands were barely stiller than her own._

“Looks like you’re up the duff, baby.” Richie flips the test around to her and Beverly’s eyes narrow on the pink plus sign. She’s not sure whether she wants to laugh or cry.

This isn’t what any of them had planned. She’s barely twenty seven. They just bought a house last year. Bill’s first book sold incredibly well and his second is about to come out, but he’s the only one of them doing that well.

After the trip to Milan went well, she’d gotten a promotion, but she’d had her new position less than a month, who knew what maternity leave would do to that.

Ben was still apprenticing with some architect bigwig who had homes in London, New York, and LA, but paid Ben with scraps and the dangling promise that his recommendation could send Ben anywhere he wanted after the year.

Richie still believed he would hit it big in comedy, and although the Losers believed in him, being a ‘Shift Lead’ at Starbucks barely paid his share of the mortgage.

Eddie did something that had to do with money that he’d explained to all of them many times over, but Beverly couldn’t tell you what it was for a much needed million dollars.

Stan, also doing pretty well, though making nowhere near what Bill brought in last year, is an accountant. But he’d talked so often about leaving to start his own firm recently that Beverly has half an inkling he’s done it already and hasn’t told anyone.

And Mike, well, Mike is a librarian with a master’s degree from a nice university and only a partial football scholarship.

Between the seven of them, they make enough money to live comfortably in their nice house in a nice area and to not feel bad about what they spend. A baby isn’t a spur of the moment Sephora splurge though, it isn’t buying whatever you want on Amazon whenever you want it.

A baby isn’t a one time expense. It’s eighteen years at least of financial responsibility and that’s what terrifies Beverly the most.

Even still, with all of the anxiety coursing through her, she feels ready. Richie smiles at her reflection in the mirror, and she knows he feels the same way. A tear escapes from Beverly’s waterline when she thinks about it.

They’re having a baby. They’re ready for a baby.

_Beverly couldn’t stop crying, Richie’s arms circled around her and pressed her firmly into his chest as she sobbed. She pressed her face into his bony chest and cried harder; he wasn’t even done growing yet, his knees still popped and in that last summer before they all left for college, he’d grown another inch, finally towering over them all, even Mike who’d puttered out at six two earlier that year._

_They were just kids themselves, but the test on the counter said they were having a baby._

_They weren’t ready for a baby, Beverly thought, and continued to cry. She cried until she couldn’t anymore, until the wet spot on Richie’s t-shirt clung to his skin with snot and salty tears. She cried until she heard the doorbell ring downstairs._

_“It’s Eddie.” Richie murmured into her hair, “We had plans today. I totally forgot when you called.”_

_Beverly pulled back and cringed when she saw the dark wet spot where she’d been crying. Richie looked down at it and smiled, “Last time you got me this wet, you definitely weren’t crying, doll.”_

_“Ugh beep beep, Richie.” Beverly said, and knocked her shoulder into Richie’s as they both went downstairs to greet Eddie and tell him the news._

“Alright. You two have been too quiet in there for too long, what’s it say?” Eddie said, pushing the bathroom door open. Neither Richie nor Beverly has time to say anything before Eddie is grabbing one of the tests, the Clearblue which was his choice, and holding it up in awe.

“You need to start taking prenatal vitamins right away. If you’ve missed two periods already you’re probably somewhere around eight weeks, which means you should be eating about three hundred more calories than normal. And no more drinking. Oh my God you were just in Milan, those fucking Italians are alcoholics. Can a baby get Fetal Alcohol Syndrome this early? Fuck! This is so exciting! You’re having a baby, Bev! Holy shit! A baby! This is amazing… Wait. This is something we’re happy about this time, right?” Eddie’s thoughts finally catch up with his mouth and his eyes flick nervously between Richie and Bev, who both look at each other and then back to Eddie.

_“What am I going to tell my mom?” Eddie pants, reaching his hand into the front pocket of his shorts for his inhaler. It barely gets any use nowadays, but a time like this definitely calls for it._

_“Slow your roll Eds, it might not even be yours.”_

_“Don’t call me Eds, Asshole! Also, my Mom isn’t stupid. I haven’t told her I’m not a virgin anymore, but she definitely suspects. I try and throw her off of you Bev, but when she finds out you’re pregnant, I’ll be the only seventeen year old in the world with a vasectomy and she’d never let me leave the house again. I doubt she’d let me leave for college. Fuck!” Eddie grips the inhaler tightly and goes in for another puff._

_“Eddie! You can’t tell your mom.” Sonia was the absolutely last person Beverly would have ever wanted to find out about that. Something about the way Sonia’s gaze, which softened from pure hatred to general mistrust of the boys but only ever hardened for her, chilled Beverly to her core._

_“If she finds out from somebody else it’ll only be worse.”_

_“No one is going to find out.” Beverly insisted. She wished that Eddie would realize what she was trying to say. Not every time someone was pregnant was there a baby down the line. Sometimes there was just a doctor and buried shame._

_“Bev, pregnancy gets kinda difficult to hide after a while, and eventually you will um… have a baby.”_

_“I’m not having a baby.” Bev spat, tears prickling her eyes again._

_“Oh.” Eddie and Richie said together, then there was a long pause._

_“We should call Bill.” Eddie spoke finally. Richie nodded. Beverly didn’t even want to think about it._

“Yeah, Eds, I think we’re happy this time.” Beverly grins and pulls Richie and Eddie in close to her. The three of them stand like that, huddled together in the bathroom until they hear a set of footsteps approaching.

Bill watches them from just outside the door with hopeful eyes, “N-n-n-news?” He asks in a small voice.

Beverly pushes away from Eddie and Richie, grabbing one of the remaining tests on the counter before throwing herself into Bill’s arms. When she pulls back after a long hug, she beams at Bill. He beams back.

“I’m pregnant!”

From up a flight of stairs, Beverly hears three shared gasps and only has to wait a moment for Mike, Stan, and Ben to race up the stairs and take turns passing the tests back and forth.

“You’re pregnant.” Mike has tears in his eyes when he looks up from his turn with the test. It wasn’t a question, but Beverly nods and feels her eyes start to well up again too when they meet his.

“We’re having a baby.” He says, staring so intently at Beverly she thinks she could count the veins in his eyes. She nods again.

“Wow.” His voice cracks and Bev can’t stand to not be touching him for even a second longer. She hugs him tight and begins to cry. They’re having a baby, she keeps thinking. Together, all of them, right here, right now, she’s growing it inside of her. They’re having a baby.

The rest of the Losers crowd in around Beverly and Mike, and they all hug and kiss for hours. It’s a mess and there are awkward moves and huffed laughs and elbows in sides, but it’s also so perfect Beverly would never dream of letting go. Even when Richie, drawing his head back slightly from where he’d been kissing Ben, says “You better not be clawing at me with the hand you were holding piss sticks with, Bev.”

They only unlock from one another when the heat, making itself known in their central airless house, becomes unbearable. By then, they’ve missed breakfast time and hugged all through acceptable lunch hours, so they head downstairs to make dinner.

Beverly moves to follow the rest of them, but is caught by Bill with a hand on her wrist.

“I j-j-just wanted to tell you, Bev… You still h-have options. Just like you did last time. We’re all excited b-b-but that doesn’t mean you have to keep it if you don’t want. It’s up to you. It’s a-always up to you.” He says seriously. Bev could kiss him. She hadn’t even thought of it, and she’s sure none of the others did either. They’re so happy they barely had asked themselves if she was, too.

Bev nods and tangles her fingers in Bill’s, “Yeah, Big Bill, I want this.”

_“You’re p-p-pregnant?” Bill said into the phone and Bev wished she could see his face. She’d left Richie’s and gone back to her place to call Bill and immediately wished she hadn’t._

_She wished she could hold Bill’s hand and hug him and cry into the warmth of his neck, but she couldn’t._

_She gripped the phone tighter and whispered back into the phone “Yes.”_

_“How do you f-feel?”_

_“Scared, Bill. I’m scared shitless.”_

_“What are you g-g-g-going to do?” There was silence on both ends while Bev thought about how to say it._

_Finally, she swallowed around the hot lump of tears in her throat and whispered, “I can’t have a baby, Bill.”_

_“Th-th-then you won’t have a b-b-baby.” He said it with such finality Bev put her worries on hold for just the briefest moment. If Bill said she wouldn’t have a baby, she believed him._

“So, we’re having a baby?” Bill asks once more for confirmation.

“Yeah,” Beverly squeezes his fingers tightly, “We’re having a baby.”

**12 (August)**

Something about making it out of her first trimester makes Beverly feel like she’s accomplished something great, even though she’s only known she’s pregnant for a month and even then the only thing that’s changed is that she stopped drinking alcohol all together and started taking prenatal vitamins.

Neither of those were particularly difficult things to do, anyway. Wine, her former go-to, had tasted rotten since she’d gotten back from Milan. She’d thought she’d become a bit of a European wine snob while overseas, but now she knows it must’ve been the baby. And those prenatal gummy vitamins are ridiculously tasty, so she has no problems there.

When she was picking them out in the pharmacy, a woman at least six months gone and pushing around a stroller came up behind her and grabbed the gummies. She smiled big and bright at Beverly and Beverly could only hope to glow like that later in her own pregnancy.

She opened her mouth to say as much when the woman spoke first.

“Is it your first?”

“What?”

“Pregnancy.” The woman said with a confused smile. “You’ve been staring at the options for a few minutes, I just assumed it was your first kid.”

Beverly’s cheeks flame. She’d been standing in front of the prenatal vitamins just staring for at least five minutes because neither Eddie nor Stan was texting her back and she’d forgotten which brand the two of them decided on.

“Uh, yeah,” She laughs, embarrassed, “It’s my first.”

Lie. A whisper comes from somewhere in the back of her mind, but Beverly pushes it down. Back then doesn’t count, she thinks back at the whisper. Another lie, it says.

“Well, I like this one because they taste better than the rest of them, and they basically all have the same ingredients, so why not?” The woman shakes the bottle of gummies at Bev, shrugs her shoulders like they’re two good friends throwing caution to the wind, smiles one last kind smile, and then points her stroller toward the checkout and walks off.

Beverly puts the good tasting gummies in her cart. If Eddie has a problem, then he can come get the one he wants himself.

“Oh, and some advice from someone who’s been around the block already,” The helpful lady says again to Beverly, before she’s completely out of sight, “Train the father to be a good dad _before_ the baby comes, or you’ll be changing diapers all by yourself until you have the energy to teach him and spoiler alert: you’ll never have the energy.”

Beverly throws back her head and laughs, “I appreciate the advice, but the dad is going to be the one teaching _me_ to change diapers six months in.” She hadn’t meant to, but when she talked about the father that time, she distinctly saw Mike’s face in her mind.

“Ahhh,” The other woman says, “So you got one of the good ones.” Six, actually, she wants to say. I got six of the best ones.

“Yeah, I do.” But she didn’t see six in her head. She saw one. Mike again.

_She told Mike and Stan last. Not on purpose, but because she’d only been able to make two calls before her aunt got back from work and started to ask why had been on the phone so long. After she hung up with Bill, she called Ben._

_Ben didn’t ask many questions, or provide many answers, but he was there. He let Beverly cry on the phone and told her he loved her over and over. He said it would be okay, though with less conviction than Bill. She still believed it._

_The next morning, she already had plans with Mike and Stan, so she waited for Mike to drive his Dad’s car over to pick both her and Stan up. She kept her secret in until they arrived at their destination, the quarry. There, sitting on the rocks, Bev felt exposed and naked in a way she hadn’t in years. And it wasn’t because they had stripped down to their underwear._

_“I’m pregnant.” She said with no pretense or warning. Both Mike and Stanley shot up from their lying positions on the rocks._

_“What?” Stan all but screeched. Just like she’d thought, his face went pale white like a ghost. He looked exactly how she felt inside._

_Mike just looked intensely at Beverly._

_“I’m pregnant.” She said again. She’d said it so many times over the past twenty four hours it barely held weight anymore. She was pregnant. And as soon as she could be not pregnant anymore, she wouldn’t be. “But I’m not keeping it.”_

_“Adoption?” Mike asked tentatively. Beverly shook her head._

_“People talk too much in this town. You know that.” She looked between them and they both nodded in agreement. Stan still looked a small shock away from cardiac arrest, but when she met Mike’s eyes all she saw was love and determination. He rested one of his hands gently on hers and then squeezed her fingers together._

_“We’ll figure this out, Bev. I’ve heard of a place, in the city. It’s legal here. All we need is the money. And we’ll find a way to get it for you. I’m sure, between the seven of us… I don’t have much saved, but whatever you need, it’s yours. We’ll figure it out.”_

_As Mike spoke, Beverly had a thought. Beverly wasn’t ready for a baby. She wasn’t ready to be a mother, and none of the boys were really ready to be a father, but if she asked him, Mike would make himself ready. It’s who he was: who he always had been. Even if the baby weren’t his by blood, he’d be the one to take care of it. He’d stay in Derry with the baby and no questions. He’d be a good father to her child, an incredible one to his own, if she ever asked it of him. But she wouldn’t, she couldn’t. Like she said, people talked too much._

_Beverly knew this fetus wouldn’t be Mike’s child, it wouldn’t be anyone’s. But as she turned over her hand to squeeze his hands between her own, she wished that her next one would be._

The same way Beverly can’t get enough of the prenatal gummies, Stanley can’t get enough of the sonogram picture. During one of her first OBGYN appointments, she’d had an ultrasound done and at the end they gave her a small black and white photo of something that looked like absolutely nothing, but was supposedly her baby.

Not that she didn’t absolutely love it, she cried when the ultrasound tech handed it to her, but she cried harder laughing when she handed the sonogram to Richie and all he had to say was “Lady, your camera quality is horrible.”

Eddie, Bill, Ben, and Mike all had similar reactions to Beverly. It was amazing to see that there was something real growing inside of Beverly. Incredible, real, photographic evidence that one of them had planted a little seed inside of her and one day that seed would be a whole living breathing human, but at the end of the day it really did look like just a gray blob.

Stanley loved the sonogram as if it were the actual baby. He carried the original copy in his wallet and showed it off to everyone at work. He made copies for the rest of them and put another on the fridge. He even bought a baby book he thought was tacky and kitsch, just to put it in. The sonogram to the rest of them was a fun little memento, but Stan saw what they all missed in the grey and white blur. He saw the baby.

One night, while holding the sonogram in one hand, and gently stroking over Eddie’s hip with another, Stan asked the rest of them.

“How are we going to do this?” Beverly didn’t know if he meant financially, he was the accountant after all, and the Jew, Richie would say. Maybe emotionally: how did seven people realistically raise one child together without it being confusing or strange? Possibly he meant it religiously. Stan was Jewish, Richie and Bill were raised Catholic, Eddie was some sort of presbyterian, Mike and Ben were some other type of Christian, and Bev herself was raised to fear God but she was never sure why. Most likely, he meant generally.

How were they going to do this? Anything related to the baby and not? Living with seven romantic partners you’ve loved since before you knew the meaning of the word is exactly that when it’s just the seven of you, but adding in a baby changes everything.

Stan was asking them, all things considered, how they were going to handle everything that would change with the baby.

Beverly didn’t have an answer, and judging by the looks on the other Losers faces, none of them did either. She trusted that Stan would come to whatever answer he was looking for on his own, eventually. He always did.

When no one answers him, Stanley sighs and brings the sonogram closer to his face, then smiles.

“I guess we’ll just have to figure it out.”

“We always do, Stan the Man.” Eddie sighed into Stanley’s chest.

“Yeah, I guess we do.” Stanley said, still looking intently at the sonogram. Then quieter, only speaking to the baby picture, or the baby, Beverly guessed, Stanley said “We’ll take care of you.”

_“I think I have some money left over from my mess of a Bar Mitzavah. It may be hard to get it from my parents, but I’ll find a way.” Stan said. He still looked stricken, but there was an odd determination that shone under his pale skin. “I don’t know how much it costs to have that sort of thing done, but like Mike said, we got it, Beverly. We’ll take care of it, we’ll take care of you.”_

“You always do.” Beverly locked eyes with Stanley, and she could tell they were both remembering the same moment.

**18 (September)**

Eighteen weeks in, with the still incredibly warm California fall setting in, Beverly was just starting to notice how real and powerful pregnancy hormones are. One minute, she’s sitting on the couch, wrapped up in Ben’s arms or the largest blanket in the house, content as can be, and the next minute she’s bawling because the dad in the TV commercial raised his voice just a bit too loud at his TV son for spilling a bowl of cereal.

“He’s being a dick!” She’d screamed last Saturday, “His son doesn’t deser- doesn’t deserve- doesn’t deserve thaaat.” She’d had to keep repeating herself through upset sobs. Ben had rubbed her back soothingly while Bill and Stan exchanged concerned glances that only made her cry harder. She couldn’t help it that she was emotional. Just like she couldn’t help the weird cravings she’s been having recently.

Yes, Mike, she really did want to eat a pickle with peanut butter on it. Yes, Eddie, popcorn with soy sauce was an acceptable late night treat if you’re pregnant. No, Richie, she didn’t want to hear his opinion on her eating a half pound of deli meat for dinner but throwing up every time she so much as thought about the smell of eggs or cilantro.

The worst of the ways hormones are attacking her body, though, has to be the way she has never been hornier in her fucking life. Her libido is on overdrive and has been for weeks. Luckily, there are six men around to keep her satisfied, but even they are starting to look at her like she’s some kind of nympho when she pounces on the third man of the day.

She surprised Mike during his morning shower today, just stepped in right behind him and started pressing kisses to his back. He’d jumped in surprise, but recovered quickly. He knew exactly what she wanted, so he gave it to her right away.

Mike picked Beverly up with ease and held her against the slippery wall of the shower as he fucked her quickly. He did after all, have to be at work soon. Beverly didn’t notice him looking at her strangely at the time, but looking back on it his eyes were particularly bright and intense that morning.

When they finished she went back to sleep for the two hours until her alarm went off. Not yet sated enough to get through the day, she left her and Ben’s bedroom and headed for Stan and Eddie’s. Eddie was already up and out of bed, but Stanley was there, lying still but obviously not sleeping.

Beverly watched him for a moment until he opened one eye and smirked teasingly after her. “Bev, if you want something, ask for it.”

Beverly didn’t end up asking for anything. She took what she wanted from Stanley, all of which Stanley gave willingly. With what remained of her morning with Mike easing the way, Beverly sat down easily on Stan’s cock and rode him quickly. The baby was making her crazy horny, but she also had to be at work in a little over an hour and traffic was a bitch. She didn’t have time to make love. She wanted to fuck Stan. She needed to be fucked by Stan.

Stanley got the message and grabbed Beverly’s hips to fuck deeper and quicker up into her. He hiked up her sleep shirt, one of Ben’s old ones, but almost immediately let it fall back down with barely enough time to let her know that he was coming before he did so. Still, Beverly didn’t notice anything weird. She was close anyway, so she took back the control and got herself off before Stanley went soft in her.

She texted Bill to come meet her for lunch, if he had the time between meetings for his publishing party, but even when he did show up, neither of them ate a single bite. Well, Bill ended up eating something, but it wasn’t food.

They ended up in the largest stall of the ladies’ restroom in Beverly’s office. Bill was on his knees in front of her with one of her legs brought up on top of his shoulders as he ate her out. Her skirt was pushed to her hips, her panties dangled off one stiletto, and somehow her shirt had gotten rucked up almost to her bra. Beverly knew she looked like a horrible mess of a slut, getting fucked in her office by one of her six boyfriends while her panties were about to slide off her shoe, but she couldn’t care less, especially not when Bill was flicking his tongue like she’d been teaching him to do for ten years.

“Bill!” She came with a high squeak and it’s a good thing he was holding her legs because she would have fallen over.

After, when she was pulling her skirt back down, and trying she was, the unforgiving fabric had started to get tight, she noticed Bill looking at her with the most peculiar look. If she would have looked a bit closer, she’d know he was specifically staring at her stomach, but she didn’t. She only told him to quit staring and to beat it before someone in her office noticed that Beverly and her boyfriend had been in the stall for like twenty minutes.

All of this led Beverly to right now. Even after three orgasms earlier in the day, Beverly isn’t nearly close to satisfied. She needs more, and she knew exactly who to get it from.

Now, Ben’s fucking her in their bed while Richie and Eddie each mouth at one of her tits. The two of them suck her nipples into their mouths like candy, only releasing to tweak them with their fingers, or to sit up and give Ben a sloppy wet kiss. She can’t get enough of them, them can’t get enough of her, and they definitely can’t get enough of each other.

Between the three of them, they each give her an orgasm. By the time they’ve all come, Ben right inside her and Richie and Eddie in either hand, Beverly feels the itch she’s felt all day finally cease. Her hormones are finally at bay.

Without her cloud of lust fogging everything up, Beverly is finally able to see the lovestruck and awed way Ben is looking at her right now, the unguarded wonder Eddie is unknowingly directing at her belly, and the gleeful fascination on Richie’s face. She looks down at herself and sees what the boys have been seeing all day.

There’s a roundness to her belly. It’s a distinct curve she has yet to notice before now. Other days, she’d been able to convince herself it was a food baby, or bloating, but not at this angle, not after skipping lunch.

In Beverly’s stomach, underneath her skin, there is something growing. For the first time, she sees her baby.

A grin breaks out on her face and she holds a sticky hand to the barely there swell of her tummy. It doesn’t feel real. At the same time it feels like the only real thing in the universe.

This is what the sonogram was to Stan. Her baby bump, however small, is proof of what is to come. She loves it already.

Suddenly struck by the need to see it in the light and at a different angle, Bev untangles herself from the mess of limbs on the bed and rushes quickly into the bathroom. She stands naked in front of the mirror, the same one she’d looked into ten weeks ago when she took those first tests, and angles herself slightly away from the mirror.

There it is. Her baby. It’s small, and easily mistaken for just a bit of extra weight, but it’s there.

_“There’s nothing there.” There can’t be. At most, Beverly was 6 weeks pregnant. She couldn’t be showing. Still, Beverly stood in front of the mirror, examining herself with her clothes off. Everyone on the street looked at her like they could see a bump. They stared at her like they knew her secret._

_Beverly looked harder at the mirror and tried to see what those people saw._

_Her breasts were the same size, her stomach was still flat. The only abnormality was the small purple bruise on her left thigh she couldn’t remember getting. She stared in the mirror for hours and tried to see something, anything, that gave her away. When she still couldn’t see it, she begged the world to tell her why it seemed like everyone else could._

_How could everyone see something different about her when nothing was there?”_

“I saw it this morning.” Mike surprised Beverly when he walked into the bathroom, not unlike the way she surprised him this morning. “It was the first time I’d noticed.” He was still in his clothes from work, but Beverly didn’t mind when he came up behind her and held her with her back to him.

She looked at them in the mirror together and grinned. “We can see her.”

Mike raised an eyebrow at her through the mirror, “Her?”

Beverly nodded, seriously, “I think so, yeah, her.”

“Alright, then yeah, we can see her.”

“Wow.”

**21 (October)**

It’s now officially fall, though Beverly wonders what Mainer could ever call weather still in the seventies and eighties fall. At this point in the year back home, they might’ve had their first frost depending on the year, possibly even enough for the first official snow, but there was no way in Derry, Maine hell Beverly would ever be able to wear a sleeveless shirt less than two weeks away from Halloween.

That’s exactly what she’s doing today. She wears a sleeveless shirt and holds Ben’s hand as they walk through the doors of the doctor’s office to do her twenty week ultrasound. Both Beverly and Ben have the nervous sweats and it almost makes Beverly want to pull her hand away, but as they approach the door, she tightens her grip on him and remembers a conversation they had over ten years ago.

_“I’ll go with you.” Ben said. He offered without preamble or any room for Beverly to argue, though she wouldn’t even if he had._

_“It’s just, I know there are always crazy people there, threatening and picketing. Maybe if I’m there, because I’m so big they won’t mess with you.” She’d wanted to kiss him then, more than kiss him, she wanted to do exactly what got them into this situation in the first place._

_Instead, having felt so betrayed by her body, and embarrassed by the imagined curve of her flat stomach, she just laced their fingers together and pressed a light kiss to the side of his mouth._

_“Thanks, Ben.”_

_“I’d do anything for you, Bev.” She believed him so wholly she wished for the first and only time that she could keep what was growing inside her. If only so that one more person would learn what it felt like to be loved by Ben Hanscom._

Ben would still do anything for her, up to and including dying for her and holding her sweating hand before learning the sex of their baby, two equally harrowing things Beverly is sure.

He holds her hand up until the very last moment he can, when they have to separate to give the doctor, nurses, and ultrasound techs room to move freely around the room during the actual appointment.

When the big time comes, Ben moves back to her side and picks up Beverly’s sweating palm.

“What do you want?” He asks as the nurse squirts the jelly directly onto Beverly’s belly. She winces at the cold and then shrugs.

“I don’t care…” She doesn’t, really, but every time she pictures this baby, her baby, their baby, it’s a baby girl. “What about you?”

“I want a girl.” Ben says, completely honest and straightforward. “Of course I’d love a boy. We all—” Ben cuts a quick glance at the silent nurse, who has the decency and professionalism to at least pretend she’s not eavesdropping, “Everybody would love whatever comes out of you. But me, I’ve always wanted a daughter. I want a girl, baby.”

“Me too.” Only Mike knows that Beverly already thinks she’s a girl. Richie and Stanley have been arguing back and forth nonstop for the last few weeks. Richie thinks it’s going to be a boy, Stan says a girl and their arguments are so entertaining that occasionally Eddie will throw in some scientific fact that doesn’t support either of their sides but does make the two of them more convinced they’re right just for fun.

The nurse gently starts to move the ultrasound wand around Beverly’s stomach, and they hear her heartbeat. It’s fast and strong and it’s the best thing Beverly has ever heard. She turns to Ben to ask if he thinks it’s as lovely as she does, but he’s already crying. She forgot that this is his first time hearing her in there.

She and Richie had reacted the same way the first time.

“Looks like you two got your wish…” The ultrasound tech says, then points at the screen. “That right there is your baby girl.”

It still looks like a gray and black ball of nothing to her, but that doesn’t stop Beverly from crying at the screen.

There she is, she thinks. That’s our baby girl.

**24 (November)**

Thanksgiving has always been a bit of an ordeal for their wayward group of seven. In their teen years, after they spent the day with their families, they’d meet up some place they couldn’t be seen and smoke together, just watching the stars in their winter jackets.

As they grew up and out of Derry, for the three years all of them spent apart, they still made a mission out of spending the holiday together. Mike and Richie would drive in from the East, swinging low to the south to pick up Stan in Atlanta before coming back north: Bill and Beverly both hopped on planes from the west: And Ben just had to drive a few hours east to all meet up with the rest of them in Chicago at Eddie’s place.

Now that they’re all back together again, and there are no watchful eyes or judgmental stares, but there is a growing fetus, Thanksgiving is a huge day for the Losers Club.

Mike is the chef and pulls them all into the kitchen to help at some point. One year Ben and Eddie had tried to take over, to give Mike a break, but Mike had just laughed at them and said, “Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, and I absolutely will not let it be ruined by white people mac and cheese.” There was no discussion after that, especially not when Mike’s Thanksgiving mac and cheese was the best any of them had ever eaten.

While Mike cooks, the rest of them set up the Christmas tree and start the long process of getting their home newborn baby ready.

“I can’t believe you’re doing this to me.” Richie moans as he starts haphazardly stuffing things from his room into a box. The way he’s doing it makes Beverly cringe, something is for sure going to break, but her back hurts almost daily now, so she doesn’t chance straining it by helping out too much. Also, she’d earned being lazy, she’s growing a damn baby in her womb.

About a week ago, they’d decided that Richie’s room would turn into the nursery, it was the smallest bedroom and right next door to Ben and Beverly’s, so it made the most sense. Richie moaned about not being having his own space, and Eddie and Stan moaned louder when the rest of them decided that was the best place for Richie and his displacement.

“Shut up, asshole, Stan and I are the ones making the sacrifice here. Having you in our room is going to be a fucking nightmare. There are rules, okay?” Beverly stifles a chuckle at Eddie, though truthfully, she does feel a little bad.

Stan and Eddie are particular about keeping their things clean and tidy, and Richie is anything but clean and tidy, but they had the biggest bedroom and the last time Richie stayed in Mike and Bill’s bed, Mike had complained for a week that he couldn’t sleep with two lanky asshole that stole blankets and kicked in their sleep. Beverly and Ben’s room was also out the question, if she was going to be up in the middle of the night breast feeding, she absolutely refused to have to untangle herself from not one, but two people.

“Fuck your rules, Eds, I’m your roommate whether you like it or not.” Richie says and plops a wet kiss onto Eddie’s cheek.

“I’m serious. If you don’t keep your shit organized all of your stuff is getting moved to the garage. Sleep there or on the couch, I don’t care.”

“Why does the baby even need its own room? It’s a baby.” Richie pouts, but before he can even commit to the fake disappointment, he breaks out into a grin and crosses the room to where Beverly is standing in the doorway.

“It’s a baby.” He repeats, and places his hand gently on Beverly’s stomach. It’s still so new and confusing and wonderful to them all. There is a baby in there. Under Richie’s hand, under the fabric of her dress, and under her skin, a baby is there.

Their baby is in there and she’s growing every day and it doesn’t even feel real.

“Richie! C-c-come help with the potatoes!” Bill calls from downstairs. Richie holds his hand over Beverly’s belly for just a second longer, then leans down to kiss her mouth before he quickly jaunts through the door and down to the kitchen.

Beverly places her hand in the same spot Richie’s hand just been and presses down a bit. The swell of her bump is hard beneath her hand and she can’t get enough of it.

Before, when pregnant women walked around with their hands cradling their big bellies it seemed to Beverly like a cry for attention. Like come on, we can all tell you’re pregnant without you having to hold your hand on your stomach to accentuate it. But now, she understands. She doesn’t hold her belly so that anyone will look at her and ask her how far along she is, or offer her their seat on a bus or while waiting at a restaurant, she does it to feel the life under her fingers.

There is life inside of her and just feeling the hard bump of her daughter fills her with a kind of love she’s never experienced in her life.

She loves holding her bump, but the boys might love it more.

Richie touches and cups his hand over her stomach whenever it’s within reach, as if to remind himself that it’s still there.

Eddie likes to spoon Beverly and hold both her and the baby close to him while they cuddle. He pets his hand up and around her whole belly while whispering sweet nothing’s meant only for the ears of Beverly and their baby all the while.

Ben likes to hold Beverly on his lap, facing him so that their bellies touch. The soft curve of her bump presses tightly against the hardness of his abs. He holds her impossibly tight against him and she’d asked him once why he needed her that close.

“I want to feel her grow,” He replied, and Beverly felt his smile against her neck, “I want to feel her get bigger in the moments we sit here together. I don’t want to miss a millimeter.”

Mike holds her from behind while they stand, preferably in the mirror. He likes to look down at Beverly’s belly and then back up into her eyes and grin. His smile says, “That’s our baby growing in there.” Beverly smiles back and knows that hers says “I know. I love her already.”

Bill gets down on his knees in front of Beverly every day. He holds her tightly by the back of her legs and presses his face into where their daughter’s is and speaks to her in a voice that’s loud enough that Beverly could hear if she wanted, but that she chooses to ignore. That time, she knows, is between father and daughter.

Stanley sits next to Beverly on the couch, or on a bed, or anywhere he can be at her side and holds Beverly into him. With his arm slung gently around her body, he cups their baby from the side and moves slow circles with his thumb into Beverly’s pulled taught skin.

That’s the same position they’re in after dinner, all seven of them bloated and tired. Stan and Beverly sit on the left end of the couch, Beverly tucked into Stan’s right side, with his finger rubbing back and forth on her belly.

That’s the position they’re in when Beverly first feels a small movement. At first she thinks it’s gas, especially after the meal they just had, but when it happens again, Beverly shoots upright.

“Stan! Did you feel that?” His hand fell from her waist when she moved abruptly, so she presses an excited hand to where his had been. That’s where she felt it, right below the skin Stanley was massaging.

“Feel what?” He asked, looking at Beverly like she was going nuts. Mike and Bill spared her a glance, but otherwise the rest of them seemed totally engrossed in the post-dinner garbage movie they put on to digest.

The movement doesn’t happen again, and Beverly is almost convinced she made it up when she feels it again. It’s not indigestion or gas, she’s positive now, that was a kick.

“That!” She gasps and beams, then removes her hand somewhat reluctantly to press Stanley’s hand back on her bump. Now a bit more interested, the five others look back at Stan and Beverly expectantly.

“D-d-did you feel something, Bev?” Bill asks from where he’s leaned back between Mike’s thighs.

Beverly nods furiously. It’s incredibly exhilarating. She’s never felt anything like this, the first movement, a kick. Up until this point, everything new felt like a reminder or evidence that this was real and was really happening, but the kick, the kick was something else entirely.

Her baby was in there moving around, testing out her limbs and getting ready to join them outside of her womb.

“She kicked, or moved… I don’t know… She did something!”

She has everyone’s full attention now. All six of the men wait with bated breath for Stanley to feel what Beverly was talking about. They wait for one minute, then two, then three… Four minutes go by without Beverly feeling a thing, and she feels herself start to deflate.

She wants to share this with all of them. They’ll never feel it from the inside, but she wants to give them at least a feel from the outside.

At five minutes, Beverly sighs and is about to tell Stanley sorry, but she doesn’t think it’s going to happen again, but right when she opens her mouth to speak, she feels it again.

This time, Stan is the one to gasp.

“Was that…” He trails off in wonder. She nods.

“How does it feel?” Eddie asks.

“Like nothing I’ve ever felt before.” Beverly and Stanley say at the same time. It sends shivers from Beverly’s toes to her hair follicles.

“Fuck… One of us made that.” Richie says with wonder. Beverly doesn’t know which of them is the father. She figures it doesn’t matter to her and most likely doesn’t matter to the rest of them, but she wonders sometimes.

She made a list at one point, of all the possible times she could have conceived. Sometime between May twenty second and twenty sixth is most likely, her doctor told her. She couldn’t stop laughing while making it: In those five days, she’d had sex ten times with six men. She laughed until she cried because how could she ever explain that to a doctor?

_Thursday: Ben in the clubhouse, no condom, but he said he pulled out and Ben’s typically good at that._

_Friday: Bill and Eddie at Bill’s while Bill’s parents were at work. No condoms._

_Saturday: Richie, Stan and Mike at the quarry. No condoms._

_Sunday: Ben in his car before all of us hung out, then Richie on the way home. Condoms both times._

_Monday: N/A_

_Tuesday: Mike, in his car on the way home from getting ice cream._

_Beverly felt sick to her stomach while she made a list in her diary. If Eddie had done the math right, conception was sometime that week. There were so many names and so many times, in so many places, that Beverly thought she might throw up or cry, or both._

_How could she be so stupid? How could she be such a slut?_

_Everything the girls at school said about her was right. She was a stupid little skank that let six boys fuck her and didn’t even have the whore brains to make them wear condoms._

_Everything Eddie’s mom said about her was right. She was a fast tramp with only nympho thoughts in her head, hiding below her devil red hair._

_Everything her Dad said about her was right. She let those boys ruin her._

_But even through her shame, and the self-flagellation at being stupid enough to go without some sort of birth control, Beverly did not feel ruined._

_She felt loved by all six of those boys, and though she knew it was stupid, Beverly would have gone back to each of those times and not done a single thing differently. Beverly’s shame at that moment was strong, but their love for her was stronger._

_Their love was stronger than a kid eating monster, why not humiliation?_

_Beverly ripped the list out of her diary, struck a match, and set the page on fire in the bathroom trashcan. She watched the page turn to ashes, as did her shame._

After each of the men have a turn trying to get the baby to move for them with no luck except Stanley, they retreat into their bedrooms and promise that the next day they’ll work more on getting baby-ready.

Ben and Beverly lie facing each other into the wee hours of the night, bellies pressed tightly into each other, both of them too excited to sleep. It’s only when they both start to slip their eyes closed for the night, Beverly feels a small movement. Her eyes shoot open again and she doesn’t even need to ask if Ben felt it, his eyes are already wide open and staring at her with the same love and adoration he’s looked at her with since they were thirteen, but somehow now it’s more. So much more.

**29 (December)**

“If the baby isn’t Stanley’s, does she still have to be Jewish?” Richie only narrowly avoids being hit in the face with the fork Stanley flings at him.

“What? I’m just asking!”

The seven of them are all standing in the kitchen, with the exception of Beverly, who is almost thirty weeks pregnant and will sit when she wants to sit, thank you, while Stanley tries for the tenth year in a row to teach them about Chanukah.

Mike, Ben, and Bill always listen to Stanley’s account of how the Festival of Lights came to be with rapt attention. Beverly is sure the three of them know the story as well as Stanley himself does at this point, but on the first night of Chanukah, they all listen with new ears and eager faces.

Eddie tries his best to listen, Beverly does too, but come on, it’s been ten years. A small army beat a bigger one, and at one point some people only had enough oil to burn for one night, but somehow it stretched into eight. Great, please light the candle now. I love you, babe.

Richie has not once even pretended to pay attention, but Beverly thinks he listens a lot better than he’d ever let Stan think he does. Once, during a game of bar trivia, the question had been about Chanukah, exactly what, Beverly can’t remember now, but she does remember how fast Richie’s hand shot up to answer the question. When they got home later than night, Stanley reeled Richie in for a kiss so deep Beverly thought Stan aimed to swallow him whole.

“Regardless of whether she is blood related to me, any child of mine will be Jewish.” Stan says, unimpressed. Paternity isn’t something they talk about very often, partly because it doesn’t matter now, and partly because it won’t matter later, either.

Beverly will be her baby’s mother, and the rest of them will be fathers, or dads, or papas… _That_ is something they need to figure out. With only a little more than ten weeks left, everything feels so close, yet so far.

Beverly is finally in her last trimester, and is so big she’d started to get congratulated by strangers on the street instead of the stares that barely held back the thoughts of the people around her.

Is she pregnant or just fat?

There is no room for that question now. Beverly’s belly is too round, too low on her hips, and too firm to the touch to just be a gut.

“Bev.” Mike nudges Beverly out of her head and nods toward a box that someone had just placed in front of her. She’s been zoning out a lot lately, must be the pregnancy brain.

“My family wasn’t a ‘gifts every night of Chanukah’ family, my dad said it was just the way Jewish families made up for not having Christmas and he didn’t have anything to make up for, but I think… I think I want our family to be a ‘gifts every night of Chanukah’ family.” Stan says and gestures toward the present in front of Beverly.

“It’s for the baby, but I figure you can open the first one, Bev.” In the last few months, all of them have been squirreling away small baby items, but this is the first time one has been presented as a gift. It’s a small box with plain blue wrapping paper and a silver bow.

Beverly doesn’t have the faintest clue what it is until she starts to open it. Underneath the blue wrapping paper and inside the box, there’s the tiniest part of knitted booties Beverly has ever seen.

She carefully picks them up from the box and shows everyone gathered around her at the table. The booties are so small she can hold them both comfortably in one hand. Beverly can’t imagine something with that small of feet. She can’t imagine seeing a baby that small, let alone her own baby.

Despite her growing belly and the ultrasounds and the now frequent kicking, Beverly simply cannot believe something this small and delicate will be joining their family in less than three months. It doesn’t feel real.

_Everything had gotten too real, too fast. Beverly threw up three times in the last week. She couldn’t stand certain smells and although she couldn’t put her finger on it tangibly, Beverly felt off in other ways too._

_Only a week after taking the tests, Beverly could no longer avoid the fact that there was another living being sharing her body. It was inside of her, taking her energy and her food and giving nothing back but fear and shame and a strong aversion toward the smell of vanilla._

_On Tuesday, only three short days away, Beverly would ride with Ben into a city fifty miles away with the parasite, and come back without it. She would go with most of her own savings and the boys’ as well, and come back with nothing. She would go with fear and come back out with peace of mind, at least she hoped she would._

_Right then, to Beverly, the fetus was too real. After Tuesday, it would cease to exist. Beverly didn’t know how to feel about that._

_Instead of dwelling on it, Beverly lit up a cigarette and rode away from her apartment on her bike. If she cried, the wind wiped her tears for her._

**32 (January)**

There are only eight weeks left, Beverly reminds herself on the way into the doctor’s office. Sometime last week her slowed walking pace had turned distinctly into a waddle, she could no longer sleep comfortably except with three pillows under different points in her body, and in the shower this morning she realized she could no longer see any of her toes. Beverly was done with pregnancy.

If someone asked, she’d say it was because she’s so excited to meet her baby girl, but realistically that comes second to being able to bend over and tie her own goddamn shoe.

“Can you two slow down?” She calls to Bill and Eddie. Both of her accompanying men walk at least three regular person paces in front of her, or six of the pregnant lady steps she’d taking.

“S-s-sorry, Bev. Didn’t mean to leave you behind.” Bill takes a few steps back and then, when in line and in pace with her, takes Beverly’s hand into hers. Their fingers lock together, and the familiarity of his fingers grounds her.

Once they’re in the office and checked in, Beverly is only made more aware of the way her body has changed. There are other expectant mothers waiting with her, and only one is as far along or farther than she is. Every other body in the room is flatter than hers. She’s terribly jealous that everyone around her looks like they can sit comfortably in their chair, whereas she feels lewd because no matter how she contorts her body, there’s no way her legs are crossing in front of her.

“Beverly?” A nurse calls into the waiting room. Eddie and Bill both stand up, but Bev can’t do it on her own on her first try.

Eddie starts to grab one of Bev’s hands to steady her, or pull her up, but Beverly swats him away. There are plenty of single mothers who are thirty nine weeks pregnant, not thirty two, and they must all stand up on her own.

She tries again, pushing on the arms of the stupid fucking chair as hard as she can before her own arms give out under her, “fuck!” She curses no one in particular. There are a few children waiting with their mothers and Beverly turns to shoot their moms “I’m sorry” looks before she tries again.

On her third try, Beverly plants her feet, grips the arms of the chair until her knuckles are white, and then pushes with every bit of strength she has in her sleep deprived, possibly toeless body. It isn’t enough and she goes right back down in her chair.

Everyone in the waiting room is watching her now with unimpressed, judgmental eyes and it makes Beverly want to cry, but she already cried in the shower and she’s on a strict ‘one cry a day’ rule until the end of her pregnancy, so she holds it in.

“For G-g-gods sake, Bev.” Bill rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling down at Bev like he thinks she’s cute. He stands right in front of her and lifts her from the chair as if it were the easiest thing in the universe.

Beverly can’t decide if she wants to tell him thank you, or to fuck off.

She does away with both and instead tells him defiantly, “I would have gotten it eventually.”

Both Eddie and Bill laugh at that.

“I believe you.” Eddie says, but even though he’s behind her, she hears how patronizing his voice is. He’s not trying to be mean. It’s the sort of good natured joking the seven of them have done for their whole lives, but more hormonal than she was even when they met at thirteen, Beverly doesn’t think she could respond without crying.

“You two can wait in room three over here, while I get Mom’s weight.” The nurse points to a door and Eddie and Bill shuffle in.

“Are you doing alright, honey?” Beverly looks up from the floor and looks at the nurse. She’s a tall black woman with dimples, a tightly wound bun, pink scrubs, and a kind smile. Beverly feels like she could tell her all of her problems. Instead of overloading, Beverly just says the first problem that comes to mind.

“I can’t see my toes anymore.” It’s beyond silly, Beverly knows, but still.

The nurse, RN Rhoda her badge says, purses her lips sympathetically, “Is this your first one?”

Beverly pauses, thinks back to being seventeen and scared, then nods.

“Well, Baby, you won’t see your toes standing up for at least another few weeks, but if you really want to check ‘em out, just have somebody rub your feet, and when they bring them up to their lap you can see them then. How’s that sound?”

“Good.” Rhoda’s encouraging smile and kind words break through Beverly’s thick fog of downer hormones, so she smiles back.

After she gets weighed, Rhoda leads Beverly back to the room they’d dropped Bill and Eddie in. Before Beverly opens the door, Rhoda stops her with a gentle hand on her arm.

“You’re doing great, baby. These last few weeks are the hardest for first timers, but I promise once you see your baby…”

“Girl” Beverly supplies with pride. Rhoda might just make Beverly break her once a day crying rule.

“Oh a girl! How exciting! Anyway… once you meet your baby girl, you wouldn’t care if half your toes ate the other half. She’ll be the only thing that matters. I promise.” Beverly feels a tear roll down her cheek and wipes at it quickly.

“You look like you’ve got a good support system with you, too. Don’t be afraid to lean on them.” Rhoda pats Beverly’s arm one more time and then leaves her standing at the door, holding that piece of advice to her heart.

_Beverly called them all to the Clubhouse on Sunday morning. In the summer, even below ground, the heat was stifling, and their seven too big bodies were practically touching in the tight space. It wasn’t comfortable for any of them, but Beverly had to say something that couldn’t be said anywhere there was a chance for them to be seen or heard, so down into the clubhouse they went._

_“I’m nervous for Tuesday.” That was an understatement, the biggest of the year possibly, but it was all Beverly could say._

_She was afraid of what Tuesday would bring more than she’d ever been afraid of anything in her life: more than her dad, or Henry Bowers, or even that fucking clown._

_Beverly was anxious for Tuesday. She could barely wait another day to be without whatever was growing inside of her. She wasn’t ready for a baby and the closer that bundle of cells got to being one, the less safe she felt in her own skin._

_What would happen on Tuesday still didn’t feel real to her. The pregnancy, that felt real, but the abortion… Beverly hadn’t even said the word out loud. She couldn’t bring herself to. She never once second guessed her decision to get one, nor had Mike, Ben, Bill, Stan, Richie, or Eddie, but nowhere in her mind could she begin to picture what the procedure would be like._

_In short, Beverly was nervous for Tuesday._

_“It’s alright to b-b-be scared, Bev. This is scary.” Bill was so sure and strong, always had been. That didn’t make Beverly feel any better. She knew it was fucking scary, that’s why she was fucking scared._

_“I’m more than just scared.” She admitted. Beverly wished she’d called them all to meet at night, so that they wouldn’t see her cry as she spoke. “If I were just afraid, I wouldn’t feel like this. But I’m scared and nervous and ashamed and just fucking… I don’t know. I just feel wrong.” Beverly whispered at a volume barely above a whisper._

_“I know that this is the right thing to do… getting the abortion. I couldn’t have a baby, none of us could take care of a baby… But… I still feel so wrong.”_

_Ben stood up and crossed the room to bring Beverly into his arms, “You’re not wrong. Being scared and nervous and like you don’t know what’s going on is alright, because all of us are scared and nervous and don’t know what’s going on, but Beverly, you have nothing to be ashamed of.”_

Beverly’s OBGYN is a woman of little nonsense and no filter, so when she comes in and raises her eyebrows at the two completely different men in the room than the last time she’d seen her, Beverly knows she’s going to say something.

Usually the brutal honesty is something Beverly likes in Dr. Hampton, but today, even right after her soothing conversation with Rhoda, Beverly isn’t ready for what’s to come when Dr. Hampton sends Eddie and Bill out at the end of the appointment to talk to Beverly alone.

“You know, typically I wouldn’t say anything,” Beverly has to stop from rolling her eyes, Dr. Hampton has never not shared what was on her mind with Beverly, “But since you’ve brought six different men into my offices without any explanation as to who they are, I figured I’d offer. If you’d like, I can get you set up to do a prenatal paternity test. It’s mostly noninvasive, and as far along as you are there isn’t much of a risk of miscarrying anyway, so I thought I’d offer the option up to you.” Dr. Hampton cuts a glance to the door, as if to indicate to Beverly why she thinks a paternity test might be needed. Beverly’s cheeks flame.

This is what she was worried about back then, the judgement. The way Dr. Hamptons eyebrows raise expectantly at Beverly as if she should be jumping at the opportunity to know who the father of her child is, especially if she has so little clue she’s allowing six men to sit in and play the role. Dr. Hampton looks at her in precisely the same way she imagined the people of Derry looking at her, mostly intrigue with the unmistakable glint of disgust.

Beverly barely manages to decline Dr. Hampton’s offer without crying. Once she does, avoiding the shocked look she’s sure she’ll see on her doctor’s face, Beverly all but runs out of the office. Bill and Eddie call after her, but she doesn’t turn around. Once she’s back in their car and only then, Beverly breaks her rule, and cries for the second time that day.

_“I don’t even know which of you is the father, of course I should be ashamed!” Beverly cried and broke out of Ben’s loving embrace._

_The five other boys sat silently, because that’s what they were, boys. They were quiet boys, and she was a crying girl and they were too young and too dumb to have a baby._

_Beverly couldn’t stop thinking about the paper, now ashes sitting at the bottom of her trashcan, and of how many lines she’d filled up. Five days, six guys, nine times she’d had sex. It disgusted her only because she knew how it would disgust others if they knew._

_Beverly wasn’t even sure why she cared. In only two days there would be no more baby, no more potential fathers. But she did care, and Beverly couldn’t stop herself from wondering if the fetus inside of her, given the chance to grow would have brown skin, or white like hers; blue eyes or brown; curly hair or straight. She saw so many options of what a baby of hers could look like, but she knew she would never see the fetus inside of her._

Back at home, everyone tries to cheer Beverly up after her visit.

Mike rubs her feet in his lap, so that she could see her toes, just as Rhoda suggested, though Mike had no way of knowing what Rhoda said. Sometimes he just knows.

Stanley promises to call the office and rant about how unprofessional Dr. Hampton is, only to be talked down by Eddie who tells him how big of a headache it would be to find a new doctor at thirty two weeks.

Eddie suggests instead that he, Bill, and Richie go pop her tires, but only three of them so that insurance doesn’t cover it. Beverly laughs heartily at that; Eddie’s completely serious face makes it all the better.

Bill goes out for Chinese food and comes back with enough to feed ten people, or six men and a pregnant, hangry Beverly.

Richie monologues about all the ways he’s going to make Dr. Hampton’s life a living hell in every funny voice he knows how to do.

Ben, through everything, holds Beverly in his arms while they sit on the couch together, his arms forming a protective shell around her. When she’s in his arms, nothing can hurt her.

By the end of the night, the embarrassment and shame has mostly subsided, with the help of her Losers Club surely, but also because of Rhoda’s advice. “Lean on them.” She’d said, with no judgment, only acceptance and encouragement, so Beverly did. Tonight, she’d let herself lean on them.

**36 (February)**

Beverly wakes up with wetness between her legs and her first thought, however embarrassing, is that she peed herself sometime in the night. It’s normal, she tried to convince herself. She’s read every pregnancy book Eddie bought and they all say that a loss of bladder control in the last few weeks of pregnancy happens to a high percentage of women, but fuck Beverly did not want to be in that percentage.

Beverly tries to get out of bed without disturbing Ben too much, but the effort of trying to even sit up in bed is too much and she’s panting loudly before she even makes it all the way up.

So focused on trying to heave herself up and out of bed while still being quiet, Beverly doesn’t notice the smell until she takes a minute to catch her breath.

In her long pulling inhales, she’d braced herself for the ammonia odor of piss, but instead she smells copper and her heart drops.

“Ben.” Her heart bottomed out somewhere below her body and now her lungs must be working overtime to get them back up because Beverly can’t breathe.

“Ben!” She says louder. He stirs a little but still doesn’t wake.

“Ben!” She’s yelling and is about to reach over and slap him awake when he finally responds.

“Bev? What’s going on?”

She can’t breathe. She can’t see. She can’t do anything but sit there and let it happen.

“Turn on the light.” Is the only thing she can make her mouth say, maybe she was wrong, maybe her nose was off.

She hopes she was wrong more than anything.

Ben, still sleepy, but moving fast at the scared ring of Beverly’s voice, reaches to his side of the bed and flicks on the lamp that’s there at the same time Beverly flips the blanket they slept with off of her and looks down as far as she can see over her huge belly.

It definitely isn’t piss.

_Beverly woke up Monday morning with wetness between her legs and she didn’t even need to turn on her bedroom light to know what it was._

_Still, in the early hours of morning, before the sun had fully risen, she dialed Eddie’s number and prayed his mother wouldn’t be the one to pick up the phone. If she did, Beverly would hang up and call Bill instead._

_“Kaspbrack residence.” Eddie picked up, his voice still scratchy with sleep._

_“Eddie!” Beverly whispered into the phone._

_“Beverly? What’s going on?” Beverly could practically hear his fingers digging nervously into the receiver, she almost laughed._

_“I’m bleeding.” There was a pause on the other end as Eddie took a moment to grasp exactly what she meant._

_“A lot?” He asked finally._

_“Yeah, a lot.”_

_“Should I come over?”_

_“No. I don’t think my aunt would be cool with that… I just want to know… what should I do?” It was so stupid, what would Eddie know about what to do when you were in the middle of a miscarriage?_

_As it turned out, Eddie knew quite a bit, or was guided to the right answer by some outside force, or made a series of correct guesses. He told Beverly exactly what to do, step by step._

“Get Eddie.” Her and Ben’s white blanket isn’t stained the deep red Beverly thought it would be when the smell of blood first hit her, but the unsettling dark pink isn’t what she wanted to wake up to, either.

Ben doesn’t argue, just presses a quick kiss to Beverly’s forehead, sparing only a quick look at the mess on their bed before heading down the hallway into Stan, Eddie, and Richie’s room.

Less than a minute later, Eddie comes skidding into the bedroom, Ben close at his heels. Eddie looks straight down at the wetness, then back up at Beverly.

“Are you in any pain?” He asks gingerly and kneels at Beverly’s side.

With her heart rate steadily going back down, Beverly thinks about it for a moment.

“No. No pain.” If it really were a miscarriage, or early labor, or any of the other sick heart wrenching things going through Beverly’s mind, surely, she’d be in some type of pain, but she isn’t. None at all.

In fact, the more she thinks about it, the more she’s certain there’s nothing wrong with her or their daughter at all. She has no reason to believe it, but the certainty washes over her and surrounds her in a sea of calm.

_Certainty of what was to come was the only thing that kept Beverly from being afraid of the miscarriage._

_After getting off the phone with Eddie, Beverly changed her sheets, and got right back in bed. She pulled the covers around her neck and laid there until the cramping got so bad, she knew she had to go to the bathroom._

_She didn’t cry as it happened, and only cried once after._

_She only spared a moment to mourn whatever bundle of cells had been inside of her. It wasn’t the right time for it, and it seemed to know that as well as she did._

_Beverly was certain, though, that there would be a right time. She would only need to wait, and with her six boys with her always, she would wait however long it took._

Just as she’d known back then that she was losing whatever was inside of her, Beverly knows now that her daughter is safe and still bouncing around inside of her happily, only a few weeks away from their first meeting.

“Should you go to the hospital?” Ben asks worriedly, and Beverly shakes her head.

“We can call the doctor, but I don’t know… I just have this feeling that everything is going to be alright.” Beverly hugs both of her arms around her belly, and feels their daughters foot kick out in response. She motions for both Ben and Eddie to feel, too.

“See? She’s doing just fine.” The three of them sit together on the dirty sheets of Ben and Beverly’s bed until long after the rest of the Losers have woken up, just holding their daughter, and coming down from the early morning scare.

_It’s the most peaceful Beverly has been in a while._

**40 (March 3 rd)**

Beverly, Mike, Eddie, Stan, Richie, Ben, and Bill have been completely ready for the baby for almost a month.

At this point, three days overdue and without the will to bother getting out of bed to do much more than shower, Beverly doesn’t do much besides lay in bed and wish their little angel, their daughter they were all waiting for, would decide she is ready to come out.

There isn’t anything left to do but wait. They’d decorated and stocked the nursery over a month ago, complete with a beautiful vintage white crib Beverly found at a flea market and a rocking chair Ben made himself. Everyone had forgotten Ben the architect was once Ben the builder of an underground clubhouse and was very surprised when Ben brought it through their front door and beamed “Look at what I made” like a ten year old child, not a twenty eight year old man who’d just made the most beautiful rocking chair the world had ever seen.

They stocked up on diapers and onesies and all the baby clothes their girl would need for an entire year before Beverly had entered her last four weeks.

They’d been babyproofing their house since before Beverly entered her third trimester.

Stan and Beverly had made up Beverly and baby’s hospital bag ages ago. The handmade yellow baby blanket was stitched by hand by one of Beverly’s work friends, and Beverly had even put her fashion degree to work when she’d sewn the two outfits they packed for baby.

Finally, the last thing the Losers did, was decide on the plan for the hospital. Seven people plus doctors and nurses would be too many while Beverly gave birth, so they talked it through, and Mike and Bill would be there in the hospital room while Beverly pushed.

Eddie, the worrier, had bowed out of the running right away, “I’d probably feint and be completely useless” He admitted with a shy smile.

Stan said something similar, so he was out too.

Ben looked like he might really want to be in the delivery room, and if it had been an option, Beverly would have wanted him there, but before she could ask him to be one of the ones who stayed he said “I think it should be Bill and Mike. Big Bill is always good under pressure, and Mike… I guess I don’t know why Mike, but it feels right.” Beverly knew the moment he’d said Bill and Mike that he was right. They were the perfect birthing partners according to the class they’d all taken back in November. They were both strong enough to hold someone’s hand through the birthing process, gentle enough too. They were calm and cool, but could also help vent frustration and pain.

Mike and Bill were the perfect pair to birth with, so that was their plan.

“I’m kind of offended that I wasn’t your first choice, Bev,” Richie said with mock hurt and threw himself down at Beverly’s feet where she sat on the couch. “However, I will forgive this grievous overlook if you, should you ever feel inclined to induce labor through sex, come to big Daddy Richie first.”

“Ugh, Beep Beep Richie!” Eddie said and threw the TV remote at Richie.

At the time, Beverly hadn’t even really considered Richie’s offer seriously. Labor induction sex was such a silly idea she hadn’t even given it a second thought.

Now, three days overdue, and tired of waiting, Beverly was giving it second thoughts. And a third thought. And a fourth thought.

“Richie!” Beverly calls his name before she can think better of it. She hasn’t had sex since she began to feel more whale than human, so it’s been almost a month for her. Of course, she knows none of the rest of them have gone as long as she has without it, all four bedrooms are on the same floor and it’s an old enough house that she can hear everything, but still, it’s been almost a month since they’ve been with her.

Hopefully, Richie will be up to the task. Beverly runs a hand through her hair and tries to make the nightshirt she’s been in for two days straight look sexy, but gives up.

What’s that phrase, she thinks, if you don’t love me at my worst… And this is definitely her worst.

At six and seven months she was definitely glowing, ethereal and divine with the most beautiful baby bump anyone had ever seen.

Now, overdue and sleep deprived, her red hair is more mane than cute bob and her belly button has popped out so far, it’s almost comical.

“Richie!” She calls again, refusing to let any insecurities keep her from getting what she wants, which is to get this fucking baby out. Also to get fucked for the first time in a full month, but that’s more of a bonus.

Not just Richie, but Richie, Ben, Eddie, and Stan come flying into the bedroom, all of them looking around wildly like they expect Beverly to be doing a headstand of the dresser or the splits in the closet.

“Is it happening? Holy shit! Are you in labor? Mike and Bill just went to the fucking store together because of course they did. We need to call them and—”

“Eddie!” Beverly cuts him off, laughing. “I’m not in labor… Well not yet, anyway. Actually, the reason I called Richie in here was so that…” The idea seems embarrassing now. To have sex while she’s this pregnant seems almost wrong. She shouldn’t have said anything…

“Beverly, you horndog! Were you about ask me to fuck the baby out of you?” Richie looks down at her and waggles his eyebrows. Beverly yanks the blanket on the bed over her face, mortified: how does he make her go this red so far into their relationship?

“Maybe…” She says from under the covers. Richie laughs loudly, and Beverly thinks she hears the rest of them laugh too.

“Baby, Bevvy, Bev… How am I supposed to give you all this good good if you’re hiding under a blanket?” Beverly peaks her eyes back out from the blanket and raises an eyebrow at Richie.

“So you’ll do it?”

“Will I fuck my girlfriend for the first time in like ten years? Uh duh!” Richie isn’t even finished speaking before he starts pulling his shirt off.

Ben, Eddie, and Stan continue to stand silently in the doorway, as if debating what they should do.

“Stay? Please.” Beverly looks between the three of them and hopes they understand what she’s asking for. If this works, this will be the last time she has sex for at least another six weeks. She wants all of them here for it.

Wordlessly, Ben steps forward into the room and takes off his shirt. Stan and Eddie follow and do the same.

“How do you want it, babe?” Richie’s voice mellows out during sex. It’s something Beverly loves about him. One of the many things.

“I can probably make it onto my knees if you want.” She offers. Just the thought sends a flutter all down her body. She can feel herself begin to get wet.

“I want whatever makes you the most comfortable.”

“Let’s try it that way then, and I’ll tell you if I need something else.” A hot flush creeps its way up and down her entire body. Richie turns her blood to fire, he always has.

It takes some maneuvering that feels quite unsexy, especially when Richie, Stan, and Ben all have to help Beverly get her t-shirt off, but eventually Bev gets comfortable on her hands and knees.

Richie begins to finger her, first one finger, then two slowly in and out, but Beverly is impatient and horny and wet enough that she doesn’t need more from him.

“Please, Richie, just do it now.”

“Don’t gotta ask me twice.” Richie pulls his fingers out of her, then replaces them quickly with his dick. The moment he does, down to the second that the head of his cock breaches her, Beverly feels a contraction ripple through her.

It’s so unexpected and so painful that her arms go out from underneath her.

“Fuck!” She and Ritchie yell at the same time. Stan and Ben, who’d moved to the side to watch, move in quickly and Beverly is soon sitting in the same position she’d been on the bed less than ten minutes ago.

“Not that I’m not disappointed we didn’t get to finish, but baby if my dick is good enough to send you into labor with just the head, I think it might just be magical.”

“Hey fuckhead, how about you shut the fuck up because Beverly is in fucking labor and Mike and Bill aren’t here? Now is really not the time for dick jokes.”

“It’s always the time for dick jokes, Eds.” Richie says, but he’s starting to look just as nervous as Eddie.

“I’ll call Bill. Hopefully he brought his cell to the store.” Ben starts toward the door, but gets intercepted by Bill.

“Call me for w-what?” Beverly wishes she had a camera when Bill walks into the room, because the look on his face when he sees her on the bed, sweat already starting to cover her naked, swollen body, is unable to be recreated or fully described. It’s the perfect mix of confusion, realization, more confusion, scandalization, and then realization again.

Without any confirmation, Bill springs into action, “Mike! Mike! B-b-b-b-b-fuck Bev’s in labor!”

The journey to the hospital is literal pandemonium. Stan, after checking that everything they needed was in there, left the zipper on the overnight bag undone and when Mike grabbed it in a rush out the door, everything tumbled out.

Eddie tripped over Mike cleaning up the baby bag and in the middle of laughing at it all, Beverly had another contraction that would have brought her to her knees had Ben not been supporting her entire body weight.

Once in the cars, it doesn’t get much better. They hit afternoon rush hour traffic, and even though Eddie is swerving in and out of lanes like a maniac, it still takes them thirty minutes longer than it usually does to get from their house to the hospital.

In their birth plan, it was Mike’s job to time the contractions on the way to the hospital, but somehow in the chaos, both he and Bill had ended up in the same car, and it wasn’t the one Beverly was in.

Stan and Eddie tried their best, but they argued over whether to start the timer at when the contraction started or ended so much that by the time they got to the hospital, the only thing they could tell the intake nurses was that Beverly had eight contractions during their forty minute drive, and two of them were in the time since they’d taken their last exit.

Beverly, for her part, was taking it like a fucking champ, she thought. She did all the right breathing during the right parts of the contractions. _She_ knew how far apart her contractions were, four minutes and they each lasted around fifty seconds. Beverly was rocking this whole labor thing.

In the last second before she was wheeled back into the delivery room with Mike and Bill at her side, Ben came up to her and kissed her sweaty forehead.

“I love you, Beverly. Now go have our baby girl.”

Her labor progresses quickly, all of the nurses and the midwife say. She’s going to have to push soon.

Strangely, more than Bill or Mike, though she loves them dearly, Beverly keeps thinking that she wishes Rhoda were here with her. That nice nurse would tell her everything she wanted and needed to hear, not just baby book cliches.

“Are you ready to start pushing, Mama?” The midwife asks with a hand braced on Beverly’s knee.

“I’m scared.” She turns her head and says to Bill, just like she had all those years ago. He squeezes her hand and then brings it up to kiss her knuckles.

“We’ll take care of you, Bev.” Mike whispers, and when she squeezes her eyes shut as another contraction hits, Beverly sees Mike as he was, back when they were seventeen. He’d told her then too that they’d take care of her, and as far as she can tell, they’ve done well.

_Somehow, the clubhouse feels smaller than it did even a week ago, and Beverly knows somewhere in her mind that this will be the last time they’re in it. Their big bodies fill the room, and their bigger emotions fill even the empty space._

_“Next time,” She started, “"If this happens again. I think it will be fate. I couldn't imagine having a baby with someone who wasn't one of you. We aren’t ready right now, but I can feel it, that someday we will be.” While lying down in her dark room, all alone, Beverly hadn’t felt lonely. She was comforted by the fact that her boys, her men, her Losers, were there with her then, and they’d be there for her next time, too. The right time._

The nurse tells Beverly to push. She thinks about how this is the right time, and the pain of labor falls into the background. She pushes and thinks of fate, and how it brought her men to her, how it gave her life and took it away when she told fate she wasn’t ready, how fate brought life back to her when she was ready.

Beverly thinks of fate when the nurse tells her to push just once more. Beverly pushes fate into the world and she feels like the biggest thing in the universe. Fate cries out and it’s the first and only sound Beverly has ever heard.

The nurses gently places fate on Bev’s chest, and underneath the birth goo she sees her baby. Her baby. Their baby. Their baby with a full head of dark brown hair, and her skin, although lightly purple, is undoubtedly a light brown.

Bev turns her head to look at Mike, to ask him if he sees what she sees, but before she can, he’s pulling her into him and kissing her sweaty forehead. “She’s all of ours.” He whispers into the top of her scalp.

Bill cuts the umbilical cord as Beverly and Mike cry into each other and hold the baby securely between them. She’s heavier than lead but lighter than air at the same time.

This baby, Beverly thinks, is the whole World. This baby is the Sun. Her baby is the World. Her baby is the sun. Their baby is the World, their baby is the goddamn Sun.

The nurses clean the Sun off and bring her back to Beverly so that she can hold her warmth forever.

Eventually, once the actual birth is over, the rest of them are let in to see Beverly and their Universe. None of them can hold back the tears at seeing their baby for the first time, but Ben cries the biggest, fattest tears, just as she knew he would.

They’re Dads now, and Beverly is a mother. It feels incredible.

“What’s her name?” Bill says while looking down at their World. In all of their planning, from birth plans gone awry to overnight bags spilled on the ground, they’d never decided on a name.

As with most things that happen by fate, Beverly doesn’t know what she’s saying until she’s said it.

“Georgia,” She suggests, cutting her eyes quickly to Bill to gauge his reaction.

Bill looks down at the baby in his arms and starts to cry for the third time in as many hours.

“Really?” he asks them all.

“Yes.” They all reply. It seems like the only option.

“Marsh?” Eddie asks, but it doesn’t feel right.

“Hanlon?” Richie and Stan say together, but it still doesn’t click.

“Denbrough,” Beverly says, still looking at Bill, “I think it has to be.” And it feels so right no one says anything to agree, they all just know. It’s perfect, it’s fate.

 _Beverly knew, once she climbed out of the clubhouse for the last time, that the time for the seven of them to have a baby wasn’t then. She also knew that there_ would _be a right time, she need only wait for it._

A few days later, back at home in the rocking chair with Georgia, Beverly thinks that there couldn’t have been a time more right. Or people more perfect. 

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos always appreciated, thank you very much!


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